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Change the climate in Washington

The poor are victims of our failure to protect the environment.

Important climate change legislation outlined last summer provided funds to help poor countries adapt to the effects of climate change. Just before the Senate was to consider the legislation, however, these provisions had vanished.

"To be honest with you," a Senate aide told representatives of the faith community, including the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, "the provisions don't get us any of the extra votes we need."

Green isn’t just for Ordinary Time

Parishes are investing in eco-friendly techniques to save money and the earth.

On a cold Saturday morning last December, Father Charles Morris showed just how far he was willing to go to raise awareness of global warming. Lake Erie was a bone-chilling 36 degrees when the Michigan priest ducked underwater for a "polar bear swim" organized by two nonprofits working to alleviate climate change.

"Anything for the cause," says Morris with a laugh.

Renée M. LaReau is the author of Getting a Life: How to Find Your True Vocation (Orbis, 2003). She writes from Columbus, Ohio.

Political environment heating up

For voters still trying to decide between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, environmental issues won't likely sway them one way (click on their name to see their respective campaign sites on energy). The two democratic candidates hold very similar views and policy positions on climate change and energy. She calls on all levels of American society-government, industry, and individuals-to contribute to the effort, while he calls climate change "one of the greatest moral challenges of our generation."

Waste not, want not

Earth-friendly living starts at home.

My family's attempts to lessen our impact on the earth remind me of driving a car with a manual transmission for the first time: When you finally take your foot off the clutch, the car lurches forward with a screech, then stalls. Eventually you get the hang of that third pedal and start to enjoy the ride. We, too, have alternately leaped forward (often with a screech) and stalled as we make our way toward a more harmonious, environmentally conscious way of life.

City slickers get a taste of the farm

When Curt Ellis set out to learn about agriculture firsthand for his documentary King Corn (ITVS), he didn't find what he expected. "From an urban or suburban perspective," says the Portland, Oregon resident, "you imagine family farms and red barns."

Food for thought: Resources for Greener Pastures

Food is a basic part of everyone's lives and yet the issues surrounding it are extremely complex. The following resources provide more information on our personal diets, national politics, global economics, and how they all relate:

Political Food Fight

Months after the deadline for the 2002 Farm Bill passed, the House of Representatives and the Senate are still trying to create a compromise between their two versions of the bill and the Bush administration is still threatening to veto the whole thing.

Greener pastures

How family farmers are planting for a sustainable future

Russ Kremer had a near-death experience in 1989. On his central Missouri farm, he was bitten by a hog and contracted a form of strep resistant to at least five antibiotics. His hogs' feed included antibiotics to protect them—but not humans—from disease.

Doctors cured him, but Kremer decided to start his farm operation anew, raising hogs naturally. "I quit cold turkey," he says. "I've basically been a crusader or an evangelist for raising hogs this way. I did it because it was the right thing to do."

The sky is falling. No, really.

Even if Kristin Shrader-Frechette's mother hadn't died of an environmentally-induced cancer at the age of 43, leaving seven children motherless in Kentucky, chances are the Notre Dame professor would still have grown up to be a dynamo researcher and scholar working for environmental justice.

Not only does she know her science-with degrees in mathematics and philosophy as well as post-doctoral work in biology, hydroecology, and economics-she is also well versed in Catholic social teaching.